Prof. Christian Drosten is a household name in German-speaking countries. Not so much elsewhere, yet he is a crucially important figurehead in the COVID-19 test pandemic that continues to plague the entire world.

A cult has developed around Drosten, but not quite everyone is a fan. Some people haven’t forgotten that the high profile virologist was already heavily involved in the needless scaremongering in the non-event that was the 2010 swine flu, which led to the development of a rushed vaccine that resulted in a huge amount of waste and some considerable harm to those unfortunate people who got vaccinated and subsequently developed narcolepsy. (Looks like history could be about to repeat itself…)

Despite this, Drosten is the German Government’s only trusted advisor, or was, until recently.

Actually, Drosten is the one who developed the very first PCR test for this allegedly new Chinese virus. On 1 January, the very day he heard about the possible SARS cases in China, and without having any validated scientific evidence, he developed the test. He submitted the test to the WHO within days, and on 21 January, the WHO endorsed it to the rest of the world, even before he published his study! The rest is history. The timeline and arguments that Drosten has committed scientific fraud is available here (in German).

So you could say Drosten is the guy who kicked off this entire madness. Without him developing this test, we would have been none the wiser the world we would have continued along its imperfect but normal path. Well, it’s not quite like that, as the Chinese also developed their own test, presented only shortly after Drosten, according to Prof. Ulrike Kaemmerer, but she does pull apart the sloppy work by Drosten in this interview as part of the German Stiftung Corona-Ausschuss hearings. In any event, Drosten’s test was favoured by the WHO.\

Interestingly, Drosten, in his first NDR podcast on 3 March, Drosten was still saying there was no need to panic about COVID-19.

Even when MERS was in the news in 2014, Drosten was saying things that are diametrically opposed to the claims he is making today, things that would land all those who do not strictly adhere to the COVID-19 Government-imposed narrative in hot waters. In this article which appeared on 16 May 2014 in the German economic magazine Wirtschaftswoche, he comments, when asked about the usefulness of high-frequency application of the PCR test in Saudi-Arabia:

Yes, but the method is so sensitive that it can detect a single hereditary molecule of this virus. For example, if such a pathogen scurries across the nasal mucosa of a nurse for a day without her getting sick or noticing anything else, then she is suddenly a MERS case. Where previously terminally ill people were reported, now suddenly mild cases and people who are actually in perfect health are included in the reporting statistics. This could also explain the explosion in the number of cases in Saudi Arabia. In addition, the local media have been cooking up the matter to unbelievable heights. […] In the region there is hardly any other topic in the TV news or daily newspapers. And doctors in hospitals are also consumers of this news. They also consider that they should keep an eye on this disease, which is very rare in Saudi Arabia. Medicine is not free of fashion trends.

Unbelievable, isn’t it? And it gets better. Asked about what should be done about the excessive focus on this disease, he says:

It would be very helpful if the authorities in Saudi Arabia were to revert to the previous definitions of the disease. After all, what interests them first are the real cases. Whether symptomless or mildly infected hospital employees are really carriers of the virus is questionable in my opinion. Even more questionable is whether they can pass the virus on to others. The team of advisors to the new Minister of Health should distinguish more clearly between medically necessary diagnostics and scientific interest.

Interestingly, he sings such a very different tune today. Sure, it’s a different virus that does seem to pass amongst humans. But even today, neither he nor anybody else from the establishment cares about the definition of a case. In these heady Covid days, you test positive and you’re a “case” no matter what. Better still, you die not matter how, if you have that RNA sequence in your system, you’re sure to be counted as a Covid death. And the media of course are only telling the truth now in his view, because they’re faithfully repeating what he says and giving him a great platform. Perhaps the fact that German channel NDR has even given Drosten his own podcast series is telling. Ambitious virologist are only human.

Drosten could soon find himself in hot waters himself. A group of German lawyers are in the process of launching class action law suits in the US and Canada, suing Drosten and his team, for bringing onto the market a let’s call it unsuitable product, on which all the harmful government measures that were taken are ultimately based. Interesting approach. A translation of the very good interview with the lawyer spearheading this initiative is available here.

There are also fascinating revelations around Drosten’s status as a professor, including the mysterious circumstances around his PhD thesis, and the many interesting relationships and conflicts of interest Drosten enjoys, in hearing 22 of the German Stiftung Corona Ausschuss.

Wednesday, 19 August 2020

Prime Minister Scott Morrison
All State Premiers
All Federal and State Parliamentarians

Re: COVID-19

I am an ordinary citizen, and like everyone else I have been watching the developments around COVID-19 over the last months with growing concern. 

Mr Morrison’s announcement today, 19 August 2020, that he intends to make a COVID-19 vaccination mandatory was the last straw for me, and has compelled me to write to you all.

I am not an anti-vaxxer at all. However, there are good reasons why it takes upwards of 5 years to approve a vaccine, and upwards of 10 years to approve a new method of vaccination. 

The most promising vaccines in development for the SARS-Cov-2 virus are all RNA-based vaccines, in other words vaccines based on gene technology. Since this is a new method of vaccination for humans, a much longer approval process must apply. Two decades of research with this method have been unsuccessful, long-term effects cannot possibly be known, and suddenly we are to believe that a safe vaccine can be developed and rolled out within months or a year. 

It is simply reckless and irresponsible for any government or authority to release such a vaccine, and on top of that to expect that this vaccine is administered to the entire population. 

Life carries all sorts of risks, and we live with those risks, and sometimes, sadly people get hurt or sick, or die. You did not hesitate to shut down the entire society and economy over a virus which is so manifestly about as dangerous, but no more dangerous, than flu viruses we’ve lived through many times in the past. You have displayed a level of risk aversion that makes the most prudent lawyer look like a cowboy, although there were many voices around the world that warned of this all-out approach of locking down entire societies, saying they were disproportionate and unnecessary. 

And yet you are now willing to take a huge and completely unnecessary risk on behalf of the Australian people by foisting an unproven technology on us. 

Not only that, it appears that any companies providing such vaccines will be indemnified by the relevant government, in other words, they will not be held liable for any damage done. On the contrary, the damage will ultimately have to be carried by us taxpayers, whilst the pharma companies are laughing all the way to the bank. It could not get any more cynical.

In other words, I and no doubt many other of my fellow citizens, strongly object to an unnecessary and insufficiently tested vaccine being foisted on the Australian public at our own expense, let alone that such a vaccine be made directly or indirectly compulsory.

At this point I would also like to voice my strongest objection to many of the measures the governments of Australia have imposed since March/April of this year, in particular all those measures that have been and still are disrupting, and are causing widespread and immeasurable economic, social, psychological, and physical damage to many Australians.

Not only were the disastrous consequences easily foreseeable, but since March, even before these drastic measures were implemented, as I mentioned above, there were a number of renowned international experts that voiced their concerns about such disproportionate measures: Prof John Ioannidis, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi, Knut Wittkowski, Prof. Dr. Martin Haditsch, just to name a few. These people were not heard in most countries, in fact they were completely ignored, dismissed, ridiculed, or even censored by the mainstream, including by the entire Australian media.

I knew about these people and their common sense and perfectly logical and rational arguments because I cast my information net wide. I also remained calm, and was unimpressed by the media hype that was rapidly spreading and poisoning our society. I applied my critical thinking skills and I always knew that the danger from this allegedly new virus was vastly over-stated, and the measures were completely disproportional, irrational, and unjustified.

Collectively all you professional politicians were complicit in creating mass hysteria and panic in the population. You blindly relied on projections that never looked likely and have already proved to be completely wrong, predictions by a man who has been proven wrong on previous occasions. It apparently occurred to nobody, not even your advisers, to question and check the wild and exaggerated claims that were being made not just by Prof Neil Ferguson. 

No good decisions can be made in an atmosphere of fear and panic. As leaders, you should know that. 

From any responsible and diligent politician I would expect that, faced with reports of a new and potentially deadly virus, they would have taken a step back, consulted very widely (not just their established Chief Medical Officers), across a multitude of disciplines, and questioned and challenged all experts thoroughly before taking any drastic decisions, and to be transparent with the public throughout this process. 

You don’t need to be an expert in anything to do that research, but you do need to apply your critical thinking skills. I did it, why couldn’t you, who have such a huge responsibility?

You could have done everything possible to protect the vulnerable part of the population as best as possible in a humane way, and otherwise promoted traditional measures like recommending good hygiene, asked sick people to stay home, all of which are sensible measures during any flu outbreak; measures that just about everyone is happy to comply with. 

Instead, you treated this virus as another enemy and heroically declared war, and you acted and are still acting like the delusional Don Quixote, fighting against windmills. 

There are a myriad of serious issues with the testing regime, serious issues with how deaths are attributed to COVID-19. There are many inconsistencies, arbitrariness and contradictions. Nothing adds up, nothing makes sense, and there is a complete lack of transparency. It’s as if our governments were hiding something. Mind you, I am not interested in conspiracy theories. But I am very interested in getting to the bottom of things and seeing the full picture. 

Perhaps some of you politicians might by now even realise that you were wrong in taking or supporting such drastic measures back in March/April. Even the wobbly and woefully inadequate statistics we do have show that around the world none of these insane and unprecedented lockdown measures had any effect. 

Instead of admitting that you overreacted and apologising for what really went wrong here, you continue to maintain the official narrative, which appears to have infected just about every country on the planet. 

It’s not too late to turn back, but it takes character and courage. The longer you maintain this ridiculous farce the more untenable your position becomes and the more credibility you lose. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the reason why you are now peddling the imminent availability of a vaccine to the Australian people is so that you can walk away from the mess that you have created looking like heroes and saviours. 

If you were truly interested in the health and well-being of the Australian public you would not have imposed such irrational measures that do far more harm than good, that compromise our immune system and our health, you would not trample on our rights and freedoms, you would not deny us our humanity, you would not try to scare us into blind obedience, you would not have risked all our livelihoods, you would not create this mountain of debt for us and future generations, and you would not expect us all to get injected with an unproven vaccine. 

Most Australians are probably too scared of the virus to notice that our democracy, and our civil and human rights are slipping away. The most obvious example is Victoria, which has descended into a totalitarian state. 

But many of us have noticed, we can see what is going on, we have noticed with what contempt you have treated us, and we will not remain silent. 

You let down and misled the entire country. Enough is enough. 

Yours sincerely,

Jörg Probst, Macquarie Park, NSW

PS: Research is time consuming. But there is a great resource that collates a lot of information, strikes a balanced and neutral tone, and always provides credible source links, Swiss Policy Research, found at https://swprs.org